


Lab Equipment

by LogicalParafox



Series: STRQ Immortality [4]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Old Guard (Movie 2020) Fusion, Body Horror, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dissection, Torture, a universe with summer/raven/tai but this does not come up in this particular work, mentions of the rest of team STRQ
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:40:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27640855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LogicalParafox/pseuds/LogicalParafox
Summary: The doctor who supplied Qrow with inebriates while Qrow inadequately therapized himself with pit fighting learns his secret and decides to get creative with his new test subject.
Series: STRQ Immortality [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2005294
Kudos: 6





	Lab Equipment

**Author's Note:**

> The joy of doing a scattershot Nanowrimo is dipping a toe in various things. This may not end up being an actual part of the STRQ Immortality RWBY/Old Guard series canon I've been dabbling in but my compatriots in STRQ shenanigans waffled between the previous work (The Moon, Drowning) being a piece about Summer or Qrow suffering at Watts' hands and so I decided to do the other for today. 
> 
> Heed the tags, this is definitely a Dead Dove piece.

The how of things had become utterly immaterial as Watts took him apart piece by piece, seeking out the secrets of immortality.

* * *

“It’s interesting, Eagle, the way your cells heal… Unnatural or perhaps _super_ natural,” Watts laughed at his little joke, smiling as he cut deeper into Qrow’s arm with the electric saw, watching in fascination as the flesh did its best to repair itself, leaving the saw embedded in the one lingering wound sealed in.

Qrow stared up at the ceiling dully. Screaming did no good. Questions delayed things briefly if he could get Watts on a tangent of more intriguing scientific discovery, but now 15 of his fingers of different lengths floated in their own sample jars for future study. Qrow, despite his best efforts, had learned that his cells ceased regenerating once they were separated from him, and that, under the microscope, samples appeared normal. Human.

Watts explained at great length what he was doing, laughing in delight when he realized sedation was essentially useless anyway, and that he could indulge in his favorite surgeries ‘for practice’. Qrow had endured several autopsies, various organs also floating in their own little jars, grisly spectators to the doctor taking him apart piece by piece to see how many could be removed before the goose could no longer lay golden eggs.

Qrow had been left alone for several days of blissful nothing but escape attempts in between increasingly lethal injections. He doubted his deaths were transmitting any longer. He could hardly differentiate when he died and when he merely dropped unconscious from the overload of pain.

Watts had returned for this latest round as he anchored sensors and bindings to Qrow’s bones, chuckling to himself that protruding bolts were awfully Frankenstein but they were far more elegantly secure than clumsy straps after all and far more difficult to remove.

Now Watts’ explorations were accompanied by the quiet beeping of Qrow’s heart, each new cut accompanied by brief stretches of staccato alarm.

“It’s fairly amazing how whole you are,” Watts mused. “Ten fingers and ten toes despite our audience.” Watts gestured to the jars all lined up within Qrow’s field of vision.

After a few attempts to fuse Qrow’s vertebrae to keep him still for more delicate operations and the healing removing the necessary damage far too soon, Watts had put a bolt into the back of Qrow’s skull and attached it directly to the lab table, chuckling as he checked the progress. Qrow’s body attempted to reject the metal, but Watts used the mechanisms against it, settling a large head within the skull itself and forcing it into place until the bone healed. For now, it remained, though Qrow could feel faint pulses there at the back of his head when he twitched and he had a hope that it would be gone soon.

What was the point, really? Watts would simply install a new one.

His right arm was immobilized, a bolt through the humerus and another through the radius were similarly attached to the table, holding him still. Watts was currently installing similar restraints in his other arm and Qrow felt nothing but pain and despair.

* * *

“You know, it would be better if others of your kind were readily available,” Watts complained when he returned to harvest another kidney.

Qrow was bolted in place in one of the sturdy frames Watts had put together in the past weeks, held bent slightly forward for easy access to his back for extracting kidneys. At least his head was left free this time. It was a relief to have even that little amount of motion.

“None of the transplants have taken in either direction,” Watts explained with a sigh, running long cold fingers along the spot before making the incision, still careful to use proper techniques even if Qrow was low hanging fruit. It didn’t pay to get sloppy, Watts said often, narrating the surgeries.

Festering out an unwanted kidney had been a new one. Uniquely horrible as he felt his body moving under the skin, his nerves not designed to tell him what was going on internally and his fingers bolted individually to the frame, unable to move but to tense and relax his muscles.

If he could have, Qrow would have jumped at the tearing pain and sudden splat of something heavy and wet against the floor, unable to move his head to look at that point.

Watts had come in immediately, flooding the lab with light and exclaiming excitedly as he picked up the rejected kidney. The physical things Watts ripped from Qrow died shortly, not even lasting as long as regular human bits.

The fingers not in something to preserve them withered away. The implanted kidneys shriveled and none of the recipients had survived the process yet, Watts informed him matter-of-factly. Not that it mattered, his test subjects were the condemned, mere lesser accompaniment and subordinate subjects to Qrow, his new prize.

Qrow longed for death to come properly.

* * *

Qrow stared at his eyes slowly withering on little mounts, meticulously labeled and carefully monitored. Qrow himself hung listlessly from his resting berth, bolted to the wall of the lab and ’out of the way.’ Hung up like any other piece of equipment and not meant to move until there was a fresh need for him.

The lab was dim and silent but for the slow beating of his heart through the monitors and the occasional hisses and beeps of the various experiments running overnight. At least he assumed it was nighttime. Certainly, Watts wasn’t here and the lights were dimmed. He hadn’t seen the sun since he’d been waylaid and woken up here in this hermetically sealed lab, new immortal labrat for the unscrupulous doctor.

Few things brought comfort but the fact that none of his team had fallen into the awful doctor’s clutches soothed him.

Still, he tried not to think of them. Qrow no longer had the strength to struggle. The doctor wanted to see how long he could last before he succumbed to starvation. The answer thus far seemed to be ’never’ as Summer had not died over her years and years of drowning.

Qrow tried to remember what her deaths had felt like from afar, the constant dread and panic and fear and fighting.

Qrow knew he should fight, should thrash, should pit his muscles against the metal through his flesh. If he could crack the bone at those weakened points he could get down from his position mounted like a butterfly on the monster’s wall.

He could fight. He would fight.

Qrow twitched slightly, muscles tensing and bunching as he struggled against his own bones, throwing himself back and forth as best he could, externally his body moving no more than a hair’s breadth.

He gave up again at last, limp and defeated and distracted by the gnawing hunger so much more irritating than the pain.

Qrow’s fingers at least weren’t bolted down this time. He moved them slowly, one at a time, feeling his tendons and muscles move around the irritating intruder of the bolts, the flesh long since healed around them, keeping his blood inside.

He hadn’t felt any of the rest of the team in weeks. Months? Not since Watts severed his spine and mucked around with his nerves some. or maybe it had been one of the times Watts had placed electrodes throughout his brain to see the effects. The days and weeks blurred together without respite. Qrow couldn’t remember the last time he had been allowed to fall asleep rather than simply passing out from the pain. He hadn’t moved or sttod since Watts had realized the system of bolts could prove so versatile to hold a prisoner who kept breaking his way out of cells, literally.

Watts no longer talked to him. He talked at him and about him, narrating out of an apparent love of his own voice.

Qrow tried to think back to the last time he’d said anything and realized he wasn’t sure when it had been. He’d been so worried that he would let slip that he had a family, that there were others like him in some moment at the end of his strength… easier by far to mute himself voluntarily.

* * *

The lights brightened and Watts strode in cheerfully, pushing a trolley ahead of himself with rattling glass beakers on it. He paid Qrow no more mind than his other equipment, or so Qrow thought until the doctor began to unload his trolley.

It seemed to be an eye harvesting day, more specimen cases filled with preservatives and eyes.

Qrow watched dully as Watts was the only thing moving in the lab that disrupted the tedium.

He could hear his pulse accelerating as a sense of unease made the hairs on the back of his neck rise. Instincts that had done nothing to save him from this endless hell were abruptly screaming at him.

As his heart rate picked up, Watts turned, eyes bright with anticipation as he watched Qrow’s face.

Qrow looked at the doctor, confused. What had changed? Something had changed and dread filled him. His empty stomach was filled with shards of ice. He squirmed on his bolts, shifting uneasily as he looked more closely at the specimens Watts had unloaded. Nothing unusual…. just more of his eyes….

No some were blue and that red color….

He could hear the thrumming of his heart as Watts began to take notes. Qrow thrashed against the bolts, his body barely twitching as he recognized the colors of the eyes, more familiar than his own. “No,” he groaned.

“You’ve been holding out on me, **Qrow Branwen** , not only not dead but also undying, but at least now I can see if _these_ transplants will take.”


End file.
